So, this map tells you about half of what you need to know about the war in Ukraine this year:
For this, some hundreds of thousand of soldiers and civilians have been killed, wounded, raped, tortured or made into refugees.
From fairly early I’ve been saying that Ukraine should be settled by peace negotiations.
This is why.
This is WWI bullshit. Ukraine is gaining nothing, and Russia is gaining little (they’ve significantly improved their alliances and their ability to produce war goods.)
Ukraine is under extreme stress. Western countries are becoming less willing and able to support it, they’ve engaged in multiple waves of conscription and are at the point of trying to force men who fled Ukraine to come back, sign up, and go into the trenches.
There’s a fairly strong argument that France never recovered from the manpower losses of the Napoleonic war and WWI.
Now, as for the future, these sorts of wars end when one side can’t keep it up any more, and when it can’t the war ends fast or large gains are made. The country most likely to not be able to keep it up is Ukraine, it has far fewer men and resources than Russia, and those allies providing armaments are losing the will or ability to keep doing so, while Russia’s allies (who provide mostly parts, other than Iran and North Korea, who could care less about sanctions) find Russia’s needs easily supportable.
It’s hard to say “when” this will happen, but it could even occur during the next Russian offensive, it’s more than possible.
Ukraine should have negotiated for peace back in April of 2022. They had almost done so, according to many sources, when Boris Johnson visited and suddenly they changed their mind.
What have they gained by continuing to fight? Nothing but a lot of dead people they can’t replace and a pile of destruction.
As for the West, we are clearly “fighting to the last Ukrainian” and that’s despicable.
End the war. Ukraine is very unlikely to get better terms later than sooner.
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